My Soul Book Part 7

This page’s wise words are, “I want to remember that home is best, always”.
Home is so important to me. Being at work most of the day , home is where I can have me-time, where my son and my cat are with me and I can enjoy their company and be a part of their lives, where I can relax and enjoy peace. As I get older, I’m realising this more and more, and yes I don’t go out very often (less and less actually), and apart from financial reasons, being at home is what I enjoy most, for all the above reasons. “Home is best, always”.

Supplies Used for this Page

my word strips from the Soul Book class Curriculum printout

Mod Podge

blue bleeding tissue paper

green paper from a note block

old plastic card

white gesso

mop brush

Prima Marketing watercolours Tropicals set

leftovers of gessoed book pages

Black Archival Ink

black carbon ink fountain pen

Prima Marketing watercolour pencils The Classics set

waterbrush

big alphabet stamps

acrylic block for positioning the individual stamp letters

3 punched hearts embellishments

Crayola crayons in cerulean, green and scarlet

A Wink of Stella Clear brush pen

My Process

I tore a piece of blue bleeding paper and glued it with Mod Podge at the top of my page to create a sky. I brushed it on top as well to seal it and smoothe it; using a plastic card would have torn it.

For the bottom part, I used some green paper from a square note block and glued it on my page. I used an extra piece as the original width was smaller than the page width. I smoothed these with an old plastic card to remove air bubbles and creases.

Then I thoroughly dried my page using a hairdryer (I have no patience for these things! Lol!).

Using a dry mop brush, I patted the bleeding paper with white gesso to create clouds. I dried it and did another layer to create dimension.
I used a similar technique with watercolour (dark green from my Tropicals set) to create a grass texture on the green paper, then thoroughly dried my page.

Next, I gathered leftovers of gessoed book pages from an earlier project, and cut out rectangle and roof shapes. I inked the edges of my roof shape with black Archival ink to give it a grungy look, and glued my 2 shapes on my page using Mod Podge.
After drying these, I outlined the house with my black carbon ink fountain pen, and drew a door, some windows and tiles. I then outlined the roof to make it stand out a bit more. I dried the ink thoroughly so that it didn’t smudge for the next step.

I coloured in the roof with a red watercolour pencil and activated the pigment with a waterbrush. It really give a nice uneven effect.

I cut out and auditioned my word strips on my page.
When I was happy with the placement, I used a big alphabet stamp set and black Archival ink to stamp the word HOME on my page. I tried it on scrap paper first to check the position of the letters were right.
I then glued my word strips with Mod Podge.

I gathered 3 of the punched heart elements created in Part 2 of this video series, and glued them on my page to fill the empty spaces. I didn’t seal them on top like I usually do as these papers had 3-D sparkly patterns and I didn’t want to alter the original shine and texture.

I then roughly outlined the word strips and the hearts using Crayola crayons in blue, green and red to make them stand out.

I added a finishing touch with my glitter brush pen, creating subtle swashes of shine in the sky and on the hill.